The site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster fell into Russian hands in the first week of the Russian invasion, sparking fears that safety standards inside the exclusion zone could be compromised.
According to a Ukrainian government agency, the lab was part of a European Union-funded effort to improve radioactive waste management by analyzing on-site waste samples and the packaging used for waste disposal.
The government agency also reported that samples of radionuclides — unstable atoms that can emit high levels of radiation — have been removed from the lab. It said it hoped Russia would use the samples to “harm itself and not the civilized world.”
It’s the latest scare in the notorious location in northern Ukraine, near the border with Belarus. On Tuesday, the Ukrainian government warned of several fires near the plant, which are believed to have been caused by Russian artillery or arson.
And the employees who worked at the plant on Conquest Day only recently had the opportunity to go home, three weeks after they were due to rotate with a new team.
Local mayor Yuriy Fomichev spoke to CNN after the workers were locked inside the factory for 10 days, describing them as “both mentally and emotionally, but mainly physically, exhausted.”
Fomichev said more than 100 people were shift workers who should have been relieved after 12 hours.
About 13 staff and most of the guards declined to be rotated, Rafael Mariano Grossi, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said in a statement released Monday.
Earlier this month, the site had to draw power from backup diesel generators for several days before being reconnected to the national grid after repairs to damaged lines.
More than 30 people died immediately after the April 26, 1986 explosion that destroyed Chernobyl reactor No. 4 near Pripyat.
According to the International Atomic Energy Agency and the World Health Organization, countless more people died as a result of radiation in the years that followed. The Ukrainian government has evacuated about 135,000 people from the area, and a 19-mile exclusion zone around the plant will remain uninhabitable for decades.
In the months following the accident, a sarcophagus was built to cover reactor 4 and contain the radioactive material. This later deteriorated, leading to radiation leaks.
In 2016, a structure called the New Safe Confinement was positioned over the sarcophagus. The huge, arched construction is intended to prevent the release of contaminated material and protect the sarcophagus from external influences such as tornadoes or extreme thunderstorms.